Push for NSW power selloff

A top adviser to the NSW government has called for more political will to sell state-owned assets, including electricity distribution networks.

The push came as
Max Moore-Wilton
, a member of Infrastructure NSW and a former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under John Howard, said the state needed to sell under-utilised assets to fund new projects.

Kerry Schott
, who is heading the NSW government’s audit of public sector spending and management, said yesterday there “was absolutely no reason" why the government should be in the power sector.

This included the “poles and wires" transmission and distribution networks, which NSW Premier
Barry O’Farrell
committed to retain while in opposition but has since indicated he may consider selling.

An inquiry into the state’s botched $5.3 billion part-privatisation of the electricity sector will hand down its initial report by the end of the month.

Mr O’Farrell has said he would not rule out a full privatisation of the energy sector, depending on the inquiry’s recommendations.

“I think the problem is that we’re in a bit of a mess with electricity and how to disentangle it, and we need some advice on it and I think that’s happening," Dr Schott told the Infrastructure Partnerships Australia Conference in Sydney.

On the sale of state-owned assets generally, Dr Schott said: “It gets down to political will."

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She said “everything stopped" after the privatisation of state-owned insurance companies and banks, airlines and airports.

“Nothing’s happened since. Politicians are clearly of the view that the population doesn’t like it but I don’t know how much evidence there is for that."

Mr Moore-Wilton wouldn’t speculate about a power selloff ahead of the inquiry’s report but he told the conference there were “huge items of under-utilised public capital" in Sydney, such as disused land.

“These things are just a waste of money," he said. “One of the huge issues for the NSW government will be to find initial capital. It will not have the capital from the budget to fund much of what it needs to do, even using private sector resources.

“It’s going to have to find and garner additional capital and that means looking in the hollow logs."

Mr Moore-Wilton said all of the state governments were “wasting huge amounts of money at the moment by the dead state assets that are just hanging around".